Big Birds and Watermelon Sushi - Dunkeld,Victoria, Australia

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Tue 16 Mar 2010 02:21
37:38.964S  142:20.403E
 
On February 4, we packed up Sue and John's shiny red, late model Volvo, stuck Don in the front seat with his booted ankle and crutches while John moved into the driver's seat and Sue and I climbed in the back with Kate, the sister of a boater we all met along the way last season in Vanuatu.  The plan was for the five of us to head out from Melbourne for a long weekend, first traveling southwest into the old gold rush country, through the Grampians National Park with a stopover at the Royal Mail Hotel, and then south to the Great Ocean Road, which would take us east along the coast back to Melbourne.  A long weekend road trip circle.
 
Kate, a relative newcomer to Melbourne, grew up in New Zealand, spent fourteen years working in London, and moved to Melbourne about eighteen months ago where she is the human relations manager for a law firm.  She had met John and Sue a few weeks before when her part-time boater sister Penny and husband John came to visit her from New Zealand.  At that time, the five of them got together (John, Sue, Penny, John and Kate) and it was decided, in true camp mother Sue fashion, that Kate should join the four of us for a long weekend road trip to the Grampians and down the Great Ocean Road. 
 
So there we were, crippled Don, camp mother Sue, driver John and newly adopted Kate.  When Kate showed up at Sue and John's apartment before our departure on that Thursday morning, she said to me in a near-whisper when Sue was busy with the final packing preparations, "I feel a bit cheeky joining everyone for this trip since I just met Sue and John only a few weeks ago."
 
"Well!" I said, "Have no fear!  We didn't get to know John and Sue until last year in Vanuatu and within a few short weeks, Sue invited us to go with them to their New Zealand friends Tony and Annette's bach for a week on the South Island.  We did it, feeling a little cheeky because we didn't know Tony and Annette that well, and only knew Sue and John a little better, but it was fine.  We had a blast.  This is how Sue operates.  She is not happy unless the next get-together, dinner, happy hour, land tour, farmer's market visit, hair cut, nature walk, book discussion is planned."  I didn't really say that last bit to Kate, but still, it's true.
 
Anyway, off we went.  We stopped for lunch in Ballarat, the heart of the gold-rush area.  Not dissimilar from the California gold rush of '49, gold was discovered around the Ballarat area in 1851 causing thousands of diggers to flock to the area.  The gold was pretty much kaput by the end of the 1800's, and Ballarat is but a shadow of what it once was, but that gorgeous Victorian architecture remains, and Ballarat is known for having one of the finest streetscapes in Australia.  Ballarat is also known for it's small, but impressive art gallery, which is full of pastoral scenes of the area in its full gold-rush glory.  There were also an inordinate number of paintings of livestock with their proud late 1800's era owners standing beside them.  Apparently, hanging paintings of your prize livestock on the walls of your home was very fashionable at the time.  Don missed all this as the steps leading up to the gallery were too steep/scary/wet, so he sat happily in the car with his booted ankle, crutches and book (this was to become a common theme throughout our Australian road trip) while the rest of us gazed at cows and sheep. 
 
An hour or two later and we arrived at the Royal Mail Hotel in the tiny town of Dunkeld, which sits at the foot of Mt. Stugeon of the Grampians.  We were there mostly for the restaurant, but the scenery didn't hurt.  Camp mother arranged for Don and I to have a handicapped room with the all-important bench seat in the shower, and we all converged on the restaurant, ready for the ten course marathon.  At this point, there were seven of us as Ray and Helen, Sue and John's Melbourne apartment neighbors and regular Storyteller guests, had driven up from their country house in Flinders (more of this later as Ray and Helen's Flinders house is one of the places we stayed) to join us in Dunkeld.  The next three hours were filled with a parade of big white plates with tiny, intricately arranged and difficult to identify food dishes.  There was the "sushi", which was actually dehydrated and marinated watermelon that tasted more like fresh-from-the-sea tuna.  Then there was a medley of grains, served warm with a raw egg floating on top.  The rest is a blur and we were both starting to peter out around course six, but soon thereafter the dessert dishes started to arrive.  There were three of them, and each tiny bit on its own giant, white plate, was marvelous.  The whole meal was excellent, although I admit that the raw egg wasn't my favorite.  It's good my father wasn't there.  If the food didn't give him a heart attack, the price tag certainly would have.
 
Early the next morning while Don slept in after surviving the most active day since his fall, most of the rest of us went for a walk through the surrounding fields.  I didn't think to bring the camera, but wish I had because we saw a whole group of kangaroos and wallabies (smaller cousin of the kangaroo) in the tall grass.  The birds were also out in force.  We understand now why most boater-Australians moan about the lack of birdlife on many of the Pacific islands.  Australia is chock-full of birds.  Big, weird-looking and very loud birds.  Cockatoos, parrots, magpies, kookaburras.  Everywhere.
 
Later, we drove through part of Grampians National Park, stopped at an old sheep station (ranch) homestead, and then headed southwest to the coast and Port Fairy.
 
Picture 1 - Wild emus in the fields at the foot of the Serra range of mountains.  If you look closely, you will see there are three of these giant birds in the picture.
Picture 2 - View of the Serra Range in Grampian National Park.
Picture 3 - Ray and Kate walking toward the old blue stone sheep station homestead.
Picture 4 - Close-up of the typical gingerbread seen on buildings and homes throughout southeastern Australia.
Picture 5 - The ubiquitous gum tree.  Or eucalyptus as we would call them.  There are about 700 species of eucalyptus in Australia and only 15 eucalyptus species outside of Australia.  Lots and lots of eucalyptus here, and not much else.  Which is ok, because they are so interesting to look at - twisted and bent and scruffy as they are with their peeling bark and self-pruning nature.  Self-pruning as in we were warned never to sit or park our car under one because the branches are known to simply drop off at any given time - wind or no wind, it just happens.  A very peculiar place, this Australia.
 
Anne

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